I currently use three different ecosystems to get the best out of my Aqara devices: Google Home for blinds, Alexa for most sensors, and Apple for camera feeds. It works, but it’s messy. Do most of you stick with one, or is mixing inevitable?
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I’ve mixed my ecosystems but combined everything through home assistant. Mine is a mix of Apple, Google, Aqara, Meross, etc.
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Thanks for replying. I’ve heard good things about combining devices through Home Assistant, but haven’t tried it yet. What does your current setup look like?
Coming from an IT background, I know all too well that the more interfaces you have between systems, the more potential points of failure you create. So my approach is to keep the number of ecosystems as low as possible.
For Aqara, I’ve found my go-to supplier for what is now over 400 devices in my home. The products are great, and the automation setup is refreshingly simple. I run several S1+ hubs as control units for all main rooms like living, kitchen, dining, bedroom, office, and so on.
That said, I will still integrate the whole setup with Apple Home — mainly because I want Siri voice control. And beyond Aqara, there are plenty of other connected devices in my house, like EV chargers, a PV system, vacuum and mopping robots, smart kitchen appliances, and decentralized ventilation.
To tie all of that together, Home Assistant runs in the background for the more complex automation logic — for example, automatically charging the EVs as soon as the PV system produces more power than the house needs and the battery is already full.
Bottom line: as few systems as possible, but as many as necessary to get all the functions you want.
And always remember: If your car is smarter than your house… you’re driving into the future while living in the past. 
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I used to have a hard time deciding tech/brands, I wanted to stick with one and “keep it clean”, so I sticked with zigbee devices for a little while.
Well, that didn’t work out AT ALL, since then, I accepted the fact that this is not a good approach, since then I’ve been buying whatever is best for the job and I bring them together in Homeassistant, and that has worked wonderfully for the last 2 years.
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I started out like many others with a few different devices, relying on each one’s app, then linking them to Alexa and Google Home. Over the years I’ve slowly but surely been switching everything possible to locally controlled devices via Home Assistant. I’ve been burned by companies shutting down their cloud service or starting to charge subscriptions. I still use a mix of brands and protocols (zigbee, zwave, matter and a few wifi), but nearly all are now locally controlled. I do still have a couple of devices that rely on cloud connectivity, but only because I haven’t felt the need to spend the money to replace them yet.
If you can’t control it locally, you don’t really own it!
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I mainly use HomeKit for my eco system but there have been a few devices that are rarer with HK built in.
For example, I have a dehumidifier that works in the Tuya app so have managed to get it into Home Assistant and then bridged into HK so it can be controlled and work in automations
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I use one system to control (HomeKit) because of security and privacy and simplicity. I’ve always been an Apple user. But I use many different brands for variety and quality of products (aqara, Eve, Hue, ikea, Lutron, eufy, logi, Vizio, Apple). They are all HomeKit compatible so I know they meet a certain level of security and privacy and play well together. Aside from minor glitches here and there I have never had any major issues and I’m going on 12/13 years now with 100+ devices in total.